Warm Springs

Warm Springs, watering place, Meriwether co., W Ga. The salutary properties of the water springing from Pine Mt. were known to Native Americans, and white men learned of them in the late 18th cent. By the 1830s a resort was established. Destroyed by fire in 1865, it was soon rebuilt and became fashionable by the end of the 19th cent. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who found the water beneficial after his attack of poliomyelitis, established (1927) the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation to help other victims of the disease, and he gave the foundation his 2,600-acre (1,052-hectare) farm there. He retained the cottage known as the Little White House (now a national shrine), in which he died in 1945. Nearby is the city, incorporated in 1924 as Warm Springs, formerly named Bullochville. Callaway Gardens (14,000 acres/ 5,660 hectares) is to the west.